In social networking, people are often interested in forming groups or having gatherings centered on common interests. In the past, groups might form or gatherings may be held within the confines of a social or organizational setting, such as a school, community center, private club, or the like. Today the Internet offers a much more powerful tool for social networking. However, there still lacks an Internet social networking facility that provides a centralized way for people to manage groups for or events of in-person meetings through the Internet, and as such, help maintain ongoing local interest groups, create meetings around events, and the like.
The Internet now is one of the most popular sources for obtaining and sharing information. One popular activity associated with the Internet is communication between people, and notably people who may be separated by vast distances. Some familiar technologies that facilitate communication and involve the Internet include email, bulletin boards, virtual chat rooms, blogs, instant message systems, Internet-based social communications facilities, and the like. This set of technologies, and those that are similar, are characterized by being substantially solely on-line.
In other words, the foregoing set of well-known Internet related applications support geographically distributed communications, and does not have as their objective anything more.
In spite of the increased ability to communicate on-line, however, many people still are interested in meeting together in person with other people who are interested in the same topic, event, and the like. What is needed is a way to harness the formidable communications capabilities of the Internet to help support and facilitate such in-person topic or event related gatherings (herein, “gatherings” and “meetings” shall be interchangeably used, and shall unless otherwise noted refer to in-person gatherings).
The challenges of organizing real-world gatherings are much different from those of organizing online meetings. For example, to engage in online chat, there is no question of physical location, distance from home, availability of venue, or the like. All of the foregoing considerations and more, including intangibles such as social dynamics, make organizing real-world gatherings a more difficult and complex task.
Known Internet communication tools are insufficient for the task. In particular, email alone is inadequate because a person in one area has no organized way of approaching the problem of finding the identities and addresses of others in his area who are interested in a given topic and also interested in a topic-related meeting. Instant messaging and chat rooms alone are likewise inadequate for the same reasons.
Message boards and blogs are insufficient by themselves because these tools are not designed to allow a person to begin with a topic of interest or event, find an associated message board or blog that is relevant to the topic or event, and identify participants of the board or blog who are in a person's area and who are interested in an in-person topic or event related meeting.
Internet dating and introduction services are related to the idea of in-person meetings, but only on a one-to-one model, and all of these services are agnostic with respect to a particular topic of interest; instead, such services focus on compatibility with the idea of forming a relationship and not on meeting in a group setting to discuss a given topic of mutual interest. In effect, these services facilitate only one-off (non-recurring) gatherings in only a single geographical locale.
Internet newsgroups are topic related, but provide no support to a person who wants to attend a topic or event related meeting in person in his own geographic area.
Additionally, so-called “social networking” services, such as SixDegrees, provide a system for users to be introduced to friends of friends via website communication and/or email, but again provide no support to a person who wants to attend a topic or event-related gathering in person in a selected geographic area.
Internet invitation services likewise are inadequate to fulfill the above-identified need. Such services, of which Evite is an example, allow users to enter the email addresses of invitees to private events. Automated invitations are sent by the service, and each invitee may accept or decline the invitation. Separately, users may browse or search the Evite website directory of public events, but all the events are one-off, non-recurring events, and all the events must be submitted by individual users choosing to publicize already existing events. It is impossible for persons who are not already acquainted to use the system to self-organize into groups, and to attend topic-related in-person gatherings with others in a given locale. Evite thus does not provide an automated method for strangers with a common interest to self-organize into real-world, local groups.
General information postings, such as ads or articles in print media and signs posted around town, are well known. This approach starts with a meeting at a date and time certain, and then advertises the meeting. Posting such notices in common locations such as a town square or popular bulletin board is now possible online as well. One such example of this approach is a “craigslist” type website (see, e.g., dc.craigslist.com), where people wishing to advertise meetings can easily make such a posting. Such posting approaches, however, are limited in that they begin with a predetermined meeting location, date, and time, and require a group already to be formed. No self-formation of groups or meetings takes place, and the location of the posted meeting cannot be determined by those interested in attending. Furthermore, the posted events are typically one-off, non-recurring events. Any group continuity depends on the efforts of the person doing the posting, and no support along these lines is provided by the website.
While the invention has been described in connection with certain preferred embodiments, other embodiments would be understood by one of ordinary skill in the art and are encompassed herein.
All documents referenced herein are hereby incorporated by reference.